GOOD EYE, BAD EYE

A psychotherapist tells her story of childhood trauma and her path to healing.

In 1959, when Malmgren was 2 years old, she accidentally blinded herself in one eye with a kitchen knife. It was a devastating moment for her and her family, and she recounts a childhood characterized by shyness, a fear of rejection, and a desire to have a new “beautiful eye,” which was partly realized when she spent her ninth birthday working with an oculist to have a prosthesis fitted. The process was not as easy as she had expected, but Malmgren focuses in exceptional detail on each trip she took to have the artificial eye made, and the immense skill and care of each oculist. The most compelling aspect of the memoir is Malmgren’s admission of how her “sense of being Different, with a capital D” grew into “a streak of rebelliousness.” She explores an affair she had in college with a married man twice her age, her later journey to healing through yoga and meditation, and a time in the 1980s when she ran a retreat center. Her internal struggles as she attempts to come to terms with the accident and make peace with her monocularism will have readers invested in every triumph and setback in her life, including a difficult divorce, a happy remarriage, and a career change from newspaper journalism to private psychotherapy practice.She also frames her story with an account of her 2023 discovery of her old medical records in her mother’s desk; Malmgren explores her relationship with her mom, whose guilt over her momentary inattention before the accident strained and strengthened the pair’s relationship, by turns. The author’s accounts of conversations with her mother that touch on the accident arepoignant and reveal her empathy and frustration.

A fresh, open, and inspiring remembrance.